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A chum of mine in the Mother Country wrote, of old car shows, "One of the main attractions for me used to be rummaging through the boxes of old, rusty tools but we noticed more and more of the stalls were stocking 'Made in Taiwan' rubbish tools, plus the usual plastic tat."
Tat?
Tat is a language spoken by Jews in the Urals.
TAT is an acronym for the Thematic Apperception Test, a psychological measure in which subjects tell a story about a picture, from which the person administering the test may deduce the subject's projections.
TAT is also an acronym for the Trans-Activator-Gene -- a gene in the AIDS virus which compels the host cell to reproduce components of the virus.
TAT is also also an acronym for Trans-Atlantic Telecommunications -- a sort of phone line laid under the ocean in 1956.
TAT is also also also an acronym for turn-around time.
There's a verb named "tat" which describes a process by which infinitely-patient people are able to produce lace.
"Tit for tat" is an expression meaning to retaliate in an equivalent fashion, usually blow for blow, and is supposedly a corruption of "tip for tap" which has something to do with knights bashing on one another.
None of these seemed to represent my correspondent's usage of tat ... as something plastic which looked like a tool but was less desireable than old rusty metal ones. As so often happens, this is a cross-pond difference, yet another Anglo-American linguistic booby trap.
The British definition of tat, when used in this manner, is an object which is tacky, cheap, vulgar, tasteless, sleazy, inelegant, of poor quality or shoddy.
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Folks in the USA will use the adjective "tattered" to describe a person in worn-out clothing. Not so much "tatty", methinks. Tatty may be a Britishism.
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ah, interesting variations. Thanks, and tata :)
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addict
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tatty may be a Britishism
Indeed it it. Somebody told me once that "seedy" was a good North American equivalent - something gone to seed, past its best. I do like the use of "tat" for cheap ware. There's a possibility for it linked with "tawdry", as in Tweety Bird at a market saying "I tot I taw a tawdry tat!" 
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There's a possibility for it linked with "tawdry"
Methinks the derivation of "tawdry" is from Saint Audrey. The story told in the Church of England is that the saint had a throat condition which required her to wrap a scarf around her neck. At Saint Audrey's fairs, held in honour of the old girl's memory and example, cheap jewelry (e.g. necklaces) were sold of the sort that one could wear for the day and then discard. By contraction, they were referred to as "tawdry."
If this turns out to be folk etymology, I will be only mildly embarrassed, because it makes such a lovely story in any event.
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this etymology has widespread support, although non-church sources differ slightly in telling of Audrey's malady; here's Quinion: http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-taw1.htmW3 has this under "tawdry lace": that she died of a throat tumor inflicted as a punishment for her fondness for necklaces -- a less lovely version of the story.
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There are no canons of hagiography of which I am aware but, if there were any, I would think that a good one would be to opt for the more lovely version of any pious legend. Mere historicity is for the unimaginative.
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Mere historicity is for the unimaginative.
Or either for those interested in precision and accuracy, one.
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Mere historicity is for the unimaginative.
Or either for those interested in precision and accuracy, one.
Ack--'fraid I qualify on both those counts. What's historicity, please?
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